“You can imagine what it was like –just imagine all of us together. It was just like being back in the dressing room – you know what footballers are like having the craic.

“It just recreated it all.”

Just like the goings-on in a dressing room, practical jokes were also a regular occurence.

“I always remember Les going on about a garden place in Barton Grange, which had the best potato seeds. He put them down into the soil and left them to grow.

“When it was time to dig the potatoes up, I went down to Morrisons to get the biggest potatoes I could find and buried them in the ground where Les had planted his seeds. He came to dig them up and he was like, ‘Woooaah, look at these. I told you Barton Grange was the best place to go’.

“I never did tell him that the potatoes were from Morrisons.”

Gornall will always treasure the memories, especially the time he spent with Sir Tom.

“We would meet up every week, pretty much every Friday afternoon Sir Tom would come down.

“What a great man he was.

“I always used to think, ‘We’ve got one of the greatest ever footballers sitting in a garden shed – eating a bacon butty.

“But he was brilliant with me when I was at North End

“I played on the wing like Tom did.

“I always remember when I was a player at North End, he came to watch me in a reserve team game against Blackpool at Bloomfield Road once.

“He was very supportive like that of all the younger players.

“On the Monday morning, he came up to me and said, ‘Leo can I have a quiet word with you’.

“He said, ‘When you’re receiving the ball from the full-back, you have got your back to goal – make sure you’re on the half-turn so you know what’s behind you.

“ It was a simple thing he said, but it was so effective and helped my game.”